Author: Kanayan Tamar

‘Iran to export electricity to Lebanon’

press tv
Sat Jan 28, 2012 4:47PM GMT

Iran is currently exchanging electricity with Afghanistan, Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey and Turkmenistan and plans to add
5,000 megawatts of capacity annually to its power grid. Iran’s
Ambassador to Lebanon says Tehran is willing to help Beirut end its
energy problems by supplying the country with electricity and building
additional power plants.

`Lebanon requires [an additional] 1,000 MW, which we consider it to be
a small amount … given that we export around 25,000 MW and have a
surplus production equal to around 6,000 MW. We can resolve this
problem easily … as soon as possible with simple modifications,’
Ghazanfar Roknabadi told reporters after meeting Lebanese Foreign
Minister Adnan Mansour on Saturday.

Iran is currently exchanging electricity with Afghanistan, Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey and Turkmenistan and plans to add
5,000 megawatts of capacity annually to its power grid.

The statistics released by the Iranian Energy Ministry show that the
country will be exporting up to USD 1 billion in electricity by March
2012.

Iran’s total power generation capacity stands at 63,403 MW, while the
total length of the power grid exceeds 780,000 km.

Roknabadi added that it would take less than six months to route
electricity from Iran to Lebanon via Syria and about one year to build
power stations capable of producing 1,000 MW.

The Islamic Republic’s exchange of electricity with the neighboring
countries reached 1,341 MW in late December 2010. The top exporter was
Armenia with 237 megawatts, and the top importer of the Iranian
electricity was Iraq with 650 megawatts.

Iran seeks to become a major regional exporter of electricity and has
attracted more than USD 1.1 billion in investment to build three new
power plants.

Iran’s daily exchange of electricity hits 1.77GWh
Economic Desk

On Line: 28 January 2012 16:06
In Print: Sunday 29 January 2012

Iran exchanged some 1.77 gigawatt hours (GWh) of power electricity
with its neighboring countries on Friday, the IRNA news agency
reported.

Armenia exported and Iraq imported the highest amounts of electricity
to and from Iran with 294 megawatts and 1.013 gigawatts, respectively,
the report added.

The electricity exports totaled 1.318 GWh to Afghanistan, Iraq,
Azerbaijan, Armenia, Pakistan and Turkey and the imports amounted to
452 megawatts from Armenia and Turkmenistan.

The deputy Iranian energy minister has predicted that the country’s
value of electricity exports would hit $1 billion by the end of the
current calendar year (March 20, 2012).

The Mehr news agency quoted Mohammad Behzad as saying that three
billion dollars worth of technical and engineering services in the
power sector will be also exported by the yearend.

“Iran currently exchanges electricity with Turkey, Armenia,
Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq,” he said.

By the end of the fifth national development plan (2015) Iran will
boost its electricity generation capacity by 25,000 megawatts, Energy
Minister Majid Namjou said in October 2011.

Armenian army can compete with any army in the world – Major-General

news.am
January 28, 2012 | 12:32

YEREVAN.- The Armenian army has proved that it can compete with ant
army in the world, said Dapety Minister of Emergency Situations,
Major-General Astvatsatur Petrosyan.

`To declare war against Armenia, the Armenian army with all its might,
to encroach on its territory and historical heritage is at least
silly. In Karabakh our army moved forward. Our peacekeepers in Iraq
and Afghanistan have shown that they are representatives of humane
army, defending the interests of the state,’ he told journalists
stressing that the Armenian army, being the best in the region, is
comparable to any European one.

Weapons, equipment, and the ability of the Armenian soldiers are
capable of solving any problem, he added.

Germany assists in France’s Genocide denial efforts – expert
14:37 – 28.01.12

Germany has assisted France in elaborating the bill that penalizes the
Armenian Genocide denial, an Armenian expert has said.

Political analyst Levon Shirinyan told reporters on Saturday that the
European countries’ measures might be aimed at either banning Turkey
from Europe or restraining the country, or else, holding it
accountable.

”But Europe faces a lack of labor force. The birth rate in those
countries is also problematic, with the Turks having a dynamically
developing youth. Both Europe and Armenia have demographic problems
that they cannot resolve. The Turks manage to do that successfully,”
he said.

The expert further pointed out to the developing Russia-Turkey relations.

”Over the course of its history, Turkey twice appeared on the brink
of vanishing, and both times it was saved thanks to Russian weapons
and Russian assistance,” he noted. ”If Russia’s steps in the Artsakh
[Nagorno-Karabakh] issue conflict with our interests, Armenia will
have to consider its political orientation.”

Shirinyan stressed the importance of continuing the French efforts in
Russia to make the country adopt a similar bill. He said such measure
could guarantee Armenia’s security in future.

Tert.am

HAUT KARABAGH
20e anniversaire de la libération de Karin Dag au Haut Karabagh

Bako Sahakian, le Président de la République du Haut Karabagh a
participé le 26 janvier au 20e anniversaire de la libération du
village de Karin Dag situé près de Chouchi. Il était accompagné de
nombreuses personnalités de l’Etat ainsi que des invités d’Arménie. Le
service de presse de la présidence a souligné que le village de Karin
Dag mena une défense héroïque face à l’agresseur azéri en marquant
l’un des premières victoires de la libération du Haut Karabagh. «
Cette victoire a montré que patriotisme, la foi et le sacrifice
pouvaient triompher d’un ennemi plus nombreux » affirme le communiqué
de presse de Stepanakert. Bako Sahakian a de son côté souligné que
toutes les victoires de la guerre de libération du Haut Karabagh se
sont effectuées au prix du sang versé. « La meilleure façon de
maintenir leur souvenir est de développer la République » dit Bako
Sahakian.

Krikor Amirzayan

samedi 28 janvier 2012,
Krikor Amirzayan ©armenews.com

Tigran Hamaysan, The Stables, Wavendon, review
Tigran Hamaysan at The Stables, Wavendon, had something urgent to say.

Mixing folk with jazz: virtuoso Armenian pianist Tigran Hamaysan
Photo: Vahan Stepanyan
By Ivan Hewett

Daily Telegraph/UK
12:24PM GMT 27 Jan 2012

Being a virtuoso art, jazz produces prodigies just as miraculous as
those in classical music. The Armenian pianist Tigran Hamasyan is one
of them. At the age of three he was picking out his father’s favourite
rock songs at the piano, and at nine had moved on to his uncle’s
passion for Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. By the age of nineteen
he’d moved with his family to California, won the Thelonious Monk
competition and inspired awe in senior pianists such as Chick Corea.

As is often the way, this musical emigre has found that distance lends
an unexpected enchantment to his native roots. You could feel them
pulling right from the start of this gig, which drew on material from
his recent album A Fable. Hamasyan has become fascinated by the folk
music of Armenia, which in his hands sounds more Balkan than near
Eastern, turning round and round a plangent modal note with folk-like
obsessiveness.

Hamasyan is a slight, narrow-shouldered, darkly intense figure, who
often sings as he bends low over the keyboard. Much of the time he
focuses on the mid-range of the piano, as if unconsciously echoing the
limitations of folk instruments. Then he remembers he’s actually
playing the piano and the hands shoot away into Bud-Powell like flares
of virtuosity, or freeze on sudden moments of luminous stillness where
the piano rings like a bell.

This evocation of a distance from something longed-for is sharpened by
his subtle harmonic sense, which often gestures towards Chopin’s
mazurka-melancholy and Bartok’s folk arrangements. He loves to suck
the marrow from a particular interval, placing it in different
contexts to reveal its many implications. The sense of fixity this
brings is hard to escape.

Hamasyan was some minutes into My Prince will Come before he found a
jazz-like flexibility.

At moments like this it becomes clear that Hamasyan does have a real
jazz sensibility after all, something which until that point you might
have doubted (as some of the disgruntled jazz fans here clearly did).
In his efforts to catch something wild he sometimes pushes those
circling folkish patterns too far, and the awkward join between the
two halves of his musical persona sometimes shows.

But the occasional discomforts are a price well worth paying. There
are many brilliant and perfectly finished young jazz pianists around,
but Hamasyan stands out because he has something important and urgent
to say.

Tigran Hamasyan’s `A Fable’ is out now on Verve. He appears at St
George’s, Bristol (0845 4024 001), on March 1

Persepolis humbled by Sanat Naft
Sports Desk

On Line: 25 January 2012 15:51
In Print: Thursday 26 January 2012

ABADAN – Sanat Naft of Abadan crashed Persepolis football team 4-2 in
Iran Professional League (IPL) on Wednesday.

The IPL’s top scorer Founeke Sy scored a hat-trick in the match. He
put the hosts into the lead just six minutes into the match from a
free kick. Persepolis equalized the match when Sanat Naft keeper could
not save captain Ali Karimi’s bicycle kick in the 23rd minute.

Founeke Sy scored again five minutes later from a free kick. Shortly
after, Karimi leveled the match but referee Saeid Mozaffarizadeh ruled
out the goal due to offside.

Founeke Sy made hat-trick in the 28th minute after Persepolis keeper
Misagh Memarzadeh’s blunder.

Sanat Naft Armenian striker extended the lead after two minutes into
the second half after Memarzadeh made a big mistake once again. The
visiting team dominated the match and finally pulled a goal back in
the 86th minute by Mohammad Nouri.

`We conceded early and bad goals. Without a doubt, we solve the
problem soon,’ Mustafa Denizli said during the post-match news
conference. `I congratulate this victory to Abadan people and Sanat
Naft football team.’

`I congratulate people of Abadan people and Sanat Naft football for
this victory.’

Sophia Echo, Bulgaria
Jan 27 2012

Russia and Iran: Uneasy neighbours – since the 16th Century
Fri, Jan 27 2012 08:02 CET

Countries without natural borders are like amoebas. Over centuries,
they expand and contract, expand and contract.

As the Western world wonders why Russia has such a nuanced policy
toward Iran’s nuclear programme, it is important to skip back over
four centuries of history.

Under Ivan the Terrible, Russia defeated the Tatars and Russia started
to expand east to Siberia and south to the Caspian Sea. There, it
first encountered Persia, forerunner to modern Iran.

Persia’s first ambassador to Russia visited the Kremlin four centuries
ago, in 1592. For the next century, wary co-existence ensued between
the two empires, one Christian, the other Muslim.

Then, in 1722, Russia expanded south again, embarking on the first of
four successful wars against Persia. Steadily, Russia gobbled up
chunks of Persia’s Central Asian Empire. With the 1828 Treaty of
Turkemnchay, the Caspian Sea became a Russian lake.

One author of that treaty was Russia’s new ambassador to Persia,
Alexander Griboyedov, a witty and charming poet and playwright,
recently arrived from the court in St. Petersburg.

But Persian resentment of the treaty boiled over when an Armenian
eunuch escaped from the Shah’s harem and two Armenian girls escaped
from the harem of his son-in-law. Under terms of the new treaty,
Armenians were allowed safe passage from Persia to Russian-controlled
Armenia. Ambassador Griboyedov stood on principle, and protected his
Armenian charges.
What happened next, made the Iranian seizure of the United States
embassy in Tehran in 1979, or the sacking of the British embassy two
months ago, look like tea parties.

A mob of thousands of rioting Persians overwhelmed the Russian
embassy’s Cossack guards and slaughtered everyone inside. A few days
later, the remains of the eunuch were so disfigured that he was only
recognised by a scar on his hand.

When Griboyedov’s 16-year-old bride, Nino, learned of her husband’s
fate, she became so distraught that she miscarried, and lost their
baby. For the rest of her life, she refused all suitors.Today, a
larger than life Griboyedov statue in Moscow is a popular meeting
point for young people. In St. Petersburg, Griboyedov Canal is a
picturesque waterway in the heart of historic city.

Division
The embassy slaughter may live on in Russian’s popular image of Iran.
But it did not deter the Kremlin, which retained control of Northern
Iran through 1946.

In 1907, with the military rise of Germany, Russia and Britain decided
to stop wasting their energy in their “Great Game” over the former
Persian empire. That year, they signed in St. Petersburg, the
Anglo-Russian Convention. Under this treaty, Persia was divided up
between a northern Russian zone, a central neutral zone governed by a
Shah, and a southern British zone. This allowed Britain to develop oil
deposits in southern Iran and to build a refinery in Abadan. Founded
in 1909, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company grew into what is known today
as BP.

This division continued until August of 1941, when Britain and the
Soviet Union conducted a joint, three-week military campaign and
deposed the pro-German Shah, installed his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
For the next five years, the two foreign nations to oversaw what had
now come to be called Iran.

In early 1946, the British pulled out, but the Red Army stayed in
Northern Iran well beyond an exit deadline stipulated in the Teheran
Conference of 1943.

By early 1946, the Cold War was starting and Stalin tried to prolong
control over northern Iran by setting up two puppet Soviet republics
and signing a oil treaty with Teheran that gave the Soviet Union
ownership of 51 percent of northern Iran’s oil deposits. But soon
after Red Army troops withdrew from northern Iran, the puppet
republics collapsed. In late 1947, Iran’s parliament refused to ratify
the oil agreement.

`Impermissible’
With this history in mind, I could barely repress a smile Wednesday as
I sat in the Russian foreign ministry’s comfortable new press
auditorium building. Minister Sergei Lavrov, perhaps hoping that no
one in the hall knew history, was sternly warning that interference in
the internal affairs of Iran is “impermissible”.

Here, morality in diplomacy may be dictated by changing realities on the ground.

Six decades of oil earnings and a swelling young population have given
Iran a powerful military machine. Now, it may be building a nuclear
bomb.

In contrast, the Russian amoeba has retreated. With an aging and
shrinking population, Kremlin power projection has dramatically ebbed
from the Soviet era high water mark.

In the Caspian, post-Soviet Moscow’s control has receded to about 20
percent of the 7000km shoreline. And half of the Russia portion is in
Dagestan, where currently the hottest insurgency is underway in
Russia’s Islamic south. Instead of Moscow reaching across the Caspian
to destabilise Northern Iran, Moscow now fears Iran reaching across
the Caspian to destabilise southern Russia.

Last year’s Arab Spring ended a series of Soviet legacy relationships.
Russian influence in the Mediterranean receded to a toehold in Tarsus,
a naval base on Syria’s coast. Now, Russia seeks to prop up Syria’s
government, its last Arab ally in the Mediterranean. This month,
Russia sent to Syria its last aircraft carrier and fresh supplies of
bullets for Syria’s army. But a large question mark hangs over the
future of Syria.

And the Russian public has little taste in overseas military
entanglement, whether Syria or Iran.

In Central Asia, Russia talks loudly, but acts cautiously, In June
2010, Roza Otunbayeva, then president of Kyrgyzstan, publicly asked
Moscow four times to send troops to end ethnic rioting in Osh.
President Medvedev replied that he would study the matter.

Russia’s political system may be authoritarian. But the Kremlin keeps
its ear close to the ground through an extensive public opinion
polling system.

A weakened military, an aging population, and little popular support
for military adventures – these were not the concerns of Ivan the
Terrible, or of his modern day equivalent, Joseph Stalin. So, today,
as the Russian amoeba retracts, there is no indication that Russia’s
leaders want to tangle with Teheran.

James Brooke is the Moscow bureau chief of the Voice of America.

PRESS RELEASE
Catholicosate of Cilicia
Communication and Information Department
Contact: V.Rev.Fr.Krikor Chiftjian, Communications Director
Tel: (04) 410001, 410003
Fax: (04) 419724
E- mail: [email protected]
Web:

PO Box 70 317
Antelias-Lebanon

Watch our latest videos on YouTube here:

HIS HOLINESS ARAM I RECEIVES THE DIRECTOR OF THE DEPARTMENT OF
INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE OF IRAN

On Friday 27 February 2012, Dr. Mohammad Mozafari, Director of the
Department of Interreligious Dialogue met with His Holiness Aram I.
Archbishop Sebouh Sarkissian accompanied Dr. Mozafari.

Dr. Mozafari introduced the activities of his department, and expressed the
need to strengthen Christian-Muslim dialogue in the region. The
representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran also recognized the important
role of the Catholicosate of Cilicia in Christian-Muslim dialogue.

After listening to his guest, Catholicos Aram I emphasized the importance of
including daily life issues in dialogue meetings.

At the end they talked of the on-going dialogue between the Catholicosate of
Cilicia and the Islamic Republic of Iran in the past ten years and agreed to
hold the next meeting in May 2012 in Tehran.

##
Photo:

HRANT DINK’S VOICE
Jenna Krajeski

New Yorker Magazine

Jan 27 2012

Last week, tens of thousands of people marched from Istanbul’s Taksim
Square to the offices of the Armenian weekly Agos to commemorate the
death of its founding editor, Hrant Dink, and to protest a long-awaited
verdict against Dink’s murderers, which had been delivered a few days
earlier. At the doors of those offices, five years ago, on January 19,
2007, a teen-ager posing as an Ankara University student angling for an
interview shot Dink at close range as he was returning to work. Dink,
a Turkish citizen of Armenian heritage, was outspoken about Armenian
issues; he was prosecuted three times for violating Article 301 of
the Turkish penal code, which makes it a crime to insult Turkishness,
the Turkish nation, or Turkish institutions. Dink spent his career
challenging the intolerance behind such statutes, becoming a champion
of minority rights in a country where such causes are punishable.

The murder instantly became a symbol of the racism and ultranationalism
grinding at the core of Turkish society, a war against freedom of
expression, and the complacency of Turkey’s intellectuals. Images
from the crime-of Dink’s shabby black shoes pigeon-toed beneath the
coroner’s white tarp; of the leaderless but determined Agos staff; of
teen-aged killer Ogun Samast seeming to celebrate with his arresting
officers beneath a Turkish flag; of Samast’s white cap and his alleged
cries when fleeing the scene of “I shot the infidel!”-were etched
into the national consciousness.

Later, another potent symbol was added, that of a small, circular
placard saying, “We are all Hrant. We are all Armenian.” In
the aftermath of Dink’s assassination, an organized, angry, and
determined protest movement was born in Turkey. Slogans professing
brotherhood with Dink were code for larger frustrations. It became
virtually impossible to talk about minority issues or human-rights
abuses or freedom of the press in Turkey without mentioning the Hrant
Dink assassination. Last week’s verdict, by which nineteen men were
acquitted of conspiring to kill Dink and one received a life sentence
(Samast was sentenced earlier to twenty-two years) angered many because
it ignored the possibility of a wider conspiracy. “The case will not
end like this!” was a common chant.

Dink continually professed his love for Turkey as the motivation
behind his criticism of it. The protesters, too, argued that saving the
country meant embracing, not alienating, its minorities. The rallies
were offered as an antidote the ultranationalism that killed Dink.

In the years since Dink’s murder, the movement has grown and become
more complex, bringing together Turkish liberals, Armenians, and
journalists, and also Kurds and Alevi, and women and members of the
L.G.B.T. community-basically all marginalized minorities in Turkey.

That round placard took on a neon hue at last year’s gay-pride parade.

Some complain that the passion of Dink’s defenders has overshadowed
other cases involving less prominent figures-the 2007 murder of
Christian missionaries in Malatya, for instance. But what the Dink
case provided, above all, was a starting point.

As the protest movement grew, so did the reasons to protest. In the
five years since Dink’s assassination, pressure on the opposition
from the government has increased tremendously. “Freedom of the press
in Turkey has deteriorated,” Robert Mahoney, Deputy Director of the
Committee to Protect Journalists told me. “It is going in the wrong
direction.” Mahoney said that the press in Turkey had a lot to lose
should Dink’s case not be investigated further. “Impunity is like
a cancer on press freedom,” he said. It leads to self-censorship,
preventing journalists from doing their job. “The press should be
able to investigate a crime if the court cannot do it,” Mahoney said.

“You have so many arrests of students just because they carry
posters calling for a better education,” Ekrem Eddy Guzeldere, of the
European Stability Initiative, told me. One journalist in prison is
Nedim Sener. His crime is writing a book claiming that the police and
gendarmerie (and, ultimately, the Ministry of Justice) were involved
in the murder of Hrant Dink. Only two people are allowed to visit
Sener in prison-his wife and Hosrof Dink, Hrant’s brother. After the
verdict finding that there was no conspiracy, Hosrof said, referring
to Sener, “The judiciary killed my brother again. I hope they don’t
kill my other brother.”

No one is happy with the verdict, not even the judge who admitted,
after the ruling, “I am not satisfied.” Observers noted that key
evidence-namely, phone conversations between the subjects-was not
taken into account. But what really seems to have paved the way
for the verdict, and the murder itself, is perhaps harder to admit:
deeply ingrained discrimination against Armenians, which incited both
the threats against Dink and the negligent reaction to them.

In the lead-up to Dink’s murder, some Turkish newspapers had written
published articles portraying Dink as anti-Turkish, and death threats
appeared in the comment sections of online media. Dink had asserted
publicly that one of Ataturk’s adopted daughters was of Armenian
descent, a claim that sent the nation into a tailspin. He received hate
mail and protesters marched against him outside of the Agos offices.

Article 216 of the Turkish penal code allots specific jail time-ranging
from six months to three years-to crimes having to do with social
class, race, religion, or sectarian or regional differences, even
gender. But the article is generally only used against those who
denigrate Turks, not minorities. And in a country where the President
responded to assertions that he was part Armenian by bringing a court
case against those who “slandered” him, there is a long way to go.

Mustafa Akyol, a journalist and the author of “Islam Without Extremes,”
pointed to the sluggishness and bigotry of the Turkish justice system
at all stages of the Dink story. “The people in Istanbul didn’t do
anything to protect him,” Akyol told me. “I think it was basically
stupidity, neglect, and deep-seated nationalism. I think they thought,
‘Why should we protect this Armenian guy?'”

For three years, Ozlem Dalkiran, a human-rights activist, has worked
on a Web site that tracks hate speech in Turkish media, particularly
against minorities. “The focus of the hate speech changes depending on
Turkey’s agenda. But what doesn’t change are the top two: the Kurds
and the Armenians,” she told me. “Dink was murdered because he was
Armenian-because he was an Armenian who spoke out.”

“Turkey is racist,” Esra Arsan, a professor at Bilgi University,
told me. “Even after this trial, people are shouting against Armenians.

They wonder why people are taking this case so seriously. They say that
someone killed him, and that guy is in jail and what more do you want?”

At the protest last week, a moment of silence was punctuated by a
recording of Dink’s voice. Mahoney, who interviewed Dink when he was
under threat, said, “What struck me about him was his quiet courage.

He refused to be intimidated. He would write about these issues in
Agos, and then go on television and in fluent Turkish say the same
thing.” The protesters in downtown Istanbul were asking for exactly
what Hrant Dink wanted-as Dink told Mahoney, years ago, “Justice,
and to be able to speak the truth.”